Asher & Shawna

Here they are! More pictures of Asher & Shawna! I love this picture of Asher - he's got a great smile! :) In fact, think we're gonna use this picture of his for his baby footprints thingy... Remember the last time I was telling you about their weight?

Well, guess what, they've grown some more! ;p

Date	Asher	Shawna
6 Jan 10 (at birth)	2.770 kg	2.815 kg
18 Feb 10 (6 wks)	5.1 kg	4.6 kg
8 Mar 10 (9 wks)	5.6kg, 58.5cm	4.7kg, 55cm
15 Apr 10 (14 wks)	6.7kg, 61cm	5.5kg, 58cm

That last post, I was lamenting on how Shawna didn't seem to be taking as much as Asher, and hence didn't grow much. Since then, I've been talking to Shawna and asking her to drink more. Together with many prayers to the good Lord, Shawna's drinking more now, and growing well! Pd says we did well and Shawna has caught up in her weight gain - i.e. no more alarm bells ringing!Of course, Shawna is still not as big and heavy as Asher. But like I have said many times before, I don't mind that. Girls tend to be on the smaller side, and I certainly don't want her to be too hefty. Beside Asher, it is fairly obvious to any onlooker that she is smaller in size.

As such, people often assume that Asher was born bigger, at birth. Or they would say that because Asher was born first - and hence is older than Shawna - thus, he was naturally bigger in size. Hmmm, twisted logic, that, I thought.
Well anyway, Asher was smaller at birth. He was born 2.770kg and Shawna at 2.815kg - both are approximately 2.8kg in weight. But technically, Shawna was heavier than Asher by like 45 grammes. (Once she pee & poo, she'd be same weight as him. HAHAHHA)
It's just that Asher drinks more milk, and feeds in higher frequency. At one point, he would want to drink at every 2 hours while Shawna could last from 3 to 4 hours even though she drank lesser. Talk about inefficient male bodies!
But as of today, we're glad to announce that both Asher & Shawna are drinking well. They're both drinking my expressed breast milk (EBM) on weekdays day time, through the bottle, while I am at work. As of today (17 weeks), they can drink up to 140 ml every 3 hours.

pictures above taken on 22nd February 2010
Asher & Shawna @ approx 7 weeks old

Thankfully, the twins do not have problem with the bottle like Isaac did. This was one lesson we learnt with Isaac. During Isaac's time, as I was adamant on breastfeeding him and latching him on, we introduced the bottle too late (think only when he was about 10 weeks old), and too infrequently at that, such that he rejected the bottle.

Or rather, maybe it wasn't the bottle he rejected - but that he only wanted to latch on to drink milk from the source, yours truly. When I was on maternity leave, Isaac drank and drank from me and grew very big in size. But after 12 weeks, when I went back to work, he refused to drink from the bottle much. He would only drink a little, and basically wait for me to go home and drink from me.

As a result, his weight gain slowed dramatically, and we literally saw him whittle away his accumulated bulk. Sigh. At that time, he would only drink 40ml to 60ml every 3 hours. Try as she might, my mother-in-law couldn't get Isaac to drink much more than that.

Thus this time round, I made sure that we introduced the bottle earlier, from birth, in fact. As early as when I was on confinement, I would always latch the kids on, but after they stop suckling, the confinement nanny would feed them (top them up!) with more milk through the bottle, to make sure they were getting enough.

So we're pleased to see now, that the twins have no problem with drinking EBM at all :) Well done, Asher & Shawna!